PMID: 22586812Jan 1, 2010Paper

The totality of man. The anthropological approach to psychiatry in the work of Lammert van der Horst (1893-1978)

Studium
Bart Karstens

Abstract

The anthropological approach was one of the new approaches to psychiatry that emerged in the interbellum. In The Netherlands professor Van der Horst (VU-university Amsterdam and the municipal University of Amsterdam) was its most prominent proponent. The general idea of the anthropological approach was to integrate the various ways of knowing then available. A psychiatric disease was seen as the result of a failure in the self-realisation of the individual person. This required to consider all relevant aspects relating to the patient's existence. How to tailor these ideas to concrete forms of diagnosis and methods of treatment was no easy matter and Van der Horst devoted himself all his life to this task. He first sought to classify man in three or four types of character inspired by the works of Heymans and Kretschmer. Then he tried to give the specific human aspect its place in psychiatry by introducing a 'pneumatic' dimension in his analysis of persons. He also connected this dimension to Calvinism, the church he belonged to. In the 1940's he made a turn towards existentialism and tried to connect this philosophy to anthropological psychiatry. In spite of its fragmentary appearance I believe it is possible to discern a degre...Continue Reading

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